Davey Lane – Friday August 18th at Gasometer, Collingwood.
Kokomo turns the pages of his history book “The Who’s Who of Australian Rock”. Look, there he is – Davey Lane. But where is Koko? Shouldn’t there be an entry for Koko? Sure, Davey Lane is more successful, way more handsome and knows more than three chords but Kokomo has played almost half as many nights at the Greyhound Hotel (RIP) as the number of times Davey has supported Todd Rundgren. Confused? We are but you just can’t argue with math. Anyway, Kokomo will be at the Gasometer – admiring Davey’s sideburns, shoe choice and guitar collection and trying not to think about where it all went wrong.
Black Cab – Friday August 18th at H-W-L-R, Brunswick.
Kokomo Jones likes to believe he’s living in the real world, but sometimes Japanese culture tends to peer in past his spiky fringe and unusually large eyes and contaminate his thoughts. Koko’s therapist can trace most of this back to the time in the late 90’s when he saw his first tentacle based romance storyline in a Japanese cartoon. After that, oddities like crazy TV game shows of humiliation, fresh jocks from a Pepsi machine and existential doom masked as children’s TV seems as normal as ordering a take-away Okonomiyaki with Cheese and a Large Diet Dr Sake from a Drive-thru window. Kokomo can’t get enough of local psychedelic royalty Black Cab whose attention to detail is extraordinary. Whether soundtracking Cold War-era East German shenanigans like the Games of the XXI Olympiad or Koko’s Night I at Golden Plains X in MMXVI, seeing them launch Akira at Howler with wadaiko master Toshi Sakamoto is guaranteed to have you finally make some sense of your life, like a broken mirror being un-shattered but, like, in reverse and stuff. Limited edition signed tentacles available at the Merch Desk after the show.
Spiritualized – Sunday August 20th at Hamer Hall, Melbourne
Last time Spiritualized were in town Kokomo saw Bobby Gillespie in the queue outside. Kokomo was so jazzed to be in close company of Britpop Royalty that he overdid things, greening out so bad he spent the entire show after the first song in a HiFi Bar toilet cubicle, rocking back and forth and attempting to feel the gospel uplift seep through the smelly, tiled walls. Kokomo figured hey, I got a seat, it’s pretty comfy in here and I can still kinda hear things. Of course this is not entirely true. Kokomo actually couldn’t hear the music at all above the rattling auditory hallucinations calling his name and telling him what sort of person he really was. What Kokomo didn’t hallucinate was hearing Bobby later come in for a slash only to be hassled by fans mid-stream. Kokomo is an expert in Glaswegian dialects and he knows a south Mount Florida District rolled ‘R’ when he hears one. At this Spiritualized show, Kokomo’s gonna enjoy his comfy seat in the second row in a proper fancy theatre and make sure he gets his dosage right.
XoXo – Kokomo
